I agree it’s boring without it but I simply can’t agree with your statement about ‘letting people opt out’. Like I said, I’m still to field a full strength team because of work/holidays /life in general. That’s unfair penalisation for not having 30 people who might have not have anything else to do apart from play gems of sodding war!
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I’m most surprised how many forum “lurkers” This thread has brought out. Didn’t even know we had this many members! Hah
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I’m not lol… GW has been a divisive issue since before it was launched… We all remember when @Sirrian had to lock an official news thread that was meant as a GW preview right😎
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I only have 2 suggestions, neither are gameplay related (I’ve read most of those in the thread and some seemed very good and some very bad so just have to hope for the best there).
1 is a common one. Ability to max each sentinel with 1 click.
The other, on the page you go to that shows who to fight along with your daily score, guild member rounds left to fight and opponent’s rounds left to fight, please just keep that information up there when I’m done with my fights for the day. It use to be you only got the message about “you have no more fights” at the end of the week which was bad enough, but then after you added to see the opponent’s status, you changed it so that message is daily making the addition almost pointless. Please just keep that up there so we can see how the rest of the team is doing plus so I can see how I did for the day without trying to do math based on my score before starting.
Thanks.
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Useful, but also useful (and better for me) would be +1 to all of them at once. I don’t want to max them.
+1 to this.
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That works well too.
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I don’t envy the developers at all sorting through all these ideas, a few of the suggestions are exceptionally good, some would be harmful to game design/game play, some are nice but unrelated to GW, and finally a select few are comparable to ‘red is too popular’ remove it completely from the entire game😉.
I hope the developers keep in mind first and for most what players want most is an enjoyable/fun experience (yes that’s different for every player). By introducing Guild Wars prior to a developing mechanism to address issues (like grief troops) in a reasonable timeframe they unfortunately set themselves up for the last 2 months.
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Devs thanks for your work on the game. My suggestions:
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Make guild wars so that we do not have to play every single day. This pressure is causing stress/frustration for some players. Extend it if you like, or allow players to play their battles at anytime during the 2+ week period. More trophies may also help for Guild Wars, so we don’t have to play so much PVP against the same mab team to fulfill our trophy requirement for our guilds.
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Please make an algorithm so we don’t keep fighting the same team (justice and mab). I should only be fighting one or two of them per guild for guild wars. I can’t take guild wars seriously. It is just rolling dice to see who can get a 4 match first. This is why I don’t rank statues more than one level. +5 on my stats wont make a difference if Valkyrie casts.
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Please have better rewards. I would rather have glory, gems, arcane trait stones, or glory/gem keys than seals and xp. I get those already. The top brackets get a bunch of gems and troops, but other players get relatively less. I’m fine with that, but If we are getting bad rewards, then guild wars should not be frustrating without justification. Daily rewards also need help. I don’t even want xp boosts, because apparently leveling is just making me fight more difficult opponents in PVP when my troops haven’t increased in stats at all.
3.5 Please let me choose a different reward. I’d rather take 2-3 gems for the daily reward (or 5-10 weekly if the time frame is extended) and get 0 seals and 0 xp. When reward time comes around players should be able to choose from 2 or 3 rewards, and hopefully get some that will be useful to them. When crafting comes out hopefully soon, consider adding that resource to guild wars, or increase souls. It feels like the reward is to not get kicked from my guild.
Conclusion:
As it stands now, I play guild wars only to prevent getting kicked from my guild. That is not what I call fun. I would love to use a team I enjoy playing with, but that can’t happen with justice in virtually every battle in guild wars and PVP. Guild wars now asks us to play daily against teams that can instantly kill us for a few seals and xp boosts and the constant pressure of losing battles and letting our guild down.
It needs to change to allow us play with a little more flexibility (not daily if we choose), and have better rewards if it expects us to make teams with specific colors and an even less chance of winning. Famine will one shot my summoner if I put one in.
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Ok, my Guild War suggestions.
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Point System: Please keep point system so that it involves the entire guild, what’s the point in only choosing a selected few from a guild? Love that the point system scales per win, this is as it should be, higher points for consecutive wins - please keep this the same also.
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Rank System: Instead of ranks including ten guilds, change it to seven. If there are going to be six battles each week, may as well make it fair on everyone in that bracket - each guild faces the same opponents. Movement between ranks can remain the same, ie 1st - up two ranks, 2nd - up one rank, 6th - down one rank, 7th - down two ranks, 3rd/4th/5th - no movement. There will be more brackets, but atleast movement all round will be faster. As it stands, only 40% of guilds make any movement per week, with this system it would be closer to 60%.
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Battles per day: Concern was raised about people not being available every day to perform the battles. Allow all 30 battles to be fought from day one. Have a Weekly point score for the impatient people and a second Daily point score for those that choose to fight on the allotted day - War wins still giving a small boost to the players from that prevailing guild.
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Implementation: Please make any and all changes fast and minimal. Larger changes to the system could potentially annoy more people than appease the squeaky wheels. Wasn’t broken, didn’t need fixing. Please bring the excitement back to GoW quickly, more people are ‘taking a break’ with this system shut off than there ever were with the implementation of Guild Wars.
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IMO there are three fundamental problems with GW:
#1 Guardians
Controversial opinion here but IMO they were a major F up putting them in the game (in their current implementation) to begin with. Unfortunately that’s a challenge the devs now have to deal with.
Trying to undo that mistake by turning off the natural RNG for spawns was a nice experiment but not a success. The unintended side-effect is that it has crippled dozens of other Troops rendering them effectively unusable.
I would point out that crippling dozens of other cards so that a few poorly-implemented cards can’t cheese anymore is just wrong-headed.
Excluding Guardians from GW teams is the one of many possible solutions, rather than trying to rearrange the mechanics of the entire game to correct the mistake of their very existence. Or change the role of Guild Guardians from a Troop to a passive bonus much like the Banners. Fits with the theme and repairs (via exclusion) the broken mechanics.
I think this is the Elephant in the room here. GG were a major mistake from a design view and this is really the crux of the issue. The only way to address this is to depreciate their utility within GW. (And in 144 point font: IMO)
Another possible solution is a new Status Effect of “Fatigued” for example, which would prevent a spawner/transformer/board-controller from casting multiple times in a turn unless certain conditions were met (cleansed, turn passed, etc). Board-control techniques are way, way, WAY OP in this game. Single-round games are effectively the pursuit of all players because the game has gotten to the point where just passing the turn is such a deep meta game it’s gotten completely out of hand.
#2 Point loss on Troop loss
Most GW Weeks are tainted by a single negative event which emotionally sullies the entire week’s experience. Just one lost troop in an entire week of battles can leave a player with a sense of deep resentment and angst. Often it is a single mistake or “lucky” event precipitates this. I have no issue with luck or RNG as the game would be boring as hell without it…I’m just talking about how a single Troop loss can feel like the entire GW week was a bit of a non-success. I hesitate to say “loss” but that’s the emotion that comes on Thursday when you’ve fought a perfect week and then a RNG Skull-match falls and the AI Hero’s Assassin Class one-shots you.
IMO the adjustments to spawning, Mana Surge on 4-match, etc have only exacerbated this problem. Put simply I think that if you are going to award GW points for performing well in battle, do not factor the loss of single or multiple troops into the score calculation. The point is to win, doesn’t matter if your team is a bloody heap of flesh with a single Troop with 1HP left. If you win, YOU WIN and the game should count it as such.
#3 The Interface
Consider this: To understand how GW works you have to come to the official forums and read 7 posts from the Lead Developer.
UI design by programmer got this game pretty far but it’s time to hire a UI specialist.
Closing Thoughts
TL;DR: Take it offline and keep it offline until you fix it.
GW doesn’t make a lick of sense and never did when approached from an early player perspective. I can come and read the forums; I can watch random videos from 'Tubers that I may or may not trust; I can ask around. Why the F should I?
GW is basically a bolt-on and it’s obvious. There really is no fix here except the time, resources and strong expertise of the company behind this awesome game.
I’m also not so delusional to think everything operates in a perfect world. Money is being spent to advertise the game, improve it, etc. Plans for the future of the game are probably set out almost a year ahead of what us players see. I’m not trying to sermonize to the developers here or call them down. This game is DAMN AWESOME. But where here criticizing and that’s what I’m here to do in the spirit of helping, not complaining.
Also as a player I’m on the outside looking in. I’m not on the inside looking out as I have been many times in my career. So that flavors my perspectives. I don’t want to talk down to the company or devs because obviously I am blind to everything on that side of the world and can only talk from a player perspective here. This game ROCKS and so do all the awesome PEOPLE behind it. I wouldn’t have typed this all if I didn’t care like crazy.
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I still don’t understand why console players couldn’t keep playing gw seeing as they were already about 4 weeks behind the pc mobile anyway. Then just patch it up once the suggestions have been sifted through, discussed and implemented. Can’t see that being a few weeks, more likely 6 weeks minimum for us.
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1: Put Defense teams to have skin in the game. I find it very frustrating that to be honest, there is no real war here. We should be fighting color against color. That would be a real battle 
2: I know already suggested - give incentive to defense to have different teams that are not the Kerb x2/Guardian forest or Famine x2 or Famine, Death, Death Knight.
3: Reduce the RNGness of the GW. After all DK especially - killing the troop (which you have to do) just screws the game because of the Death Mark on ALL 4 troops. And before someone goes off -the fact that every troop counts on a 4 troop offense team, means you when you put a cleanser on the team, you sacrifice a lot of potential attack, and advantage.
4: Stop introducing such horrific bugs. Seriously, almost every week something new and horrible happened bug wise in GW. I lost an entire day+ because of bugs each week. Some I could work around, some there was no way (like the week that difficulty was being applied or the fact that we were fighting the wrong guild and those points were not being applied, or the tweak in gem drops that basically RNGed the entire game over to the other side). There were still as of the last week, bugs in whether you were marked a win or loss, even if you won, incorrect totals in troops (that were affecting mana and damage a spell would cast) and the points.
5: Figure out a solution to RESET a person’s fights when bugs create failures or worse recording the win as a loss.
My view from a mid guild (~400 in Guild Wars)
I dislike to be forced to play every day to get the bonus and motivate the guild. I would prefer to decide when I want to play on a weekly basis. Some players have time in the week and some only on the weekend.
I liked in the first concept that not all players would have been forced to play guild wars. I understand that it was a bad idea to tell some players that they can not participate in the war for a week. Instead you could ignore the worst results at the end of each war. So everbody can try their best (or not) and it is no problem how well they play for a week.
Since other players want 50 active members, you could reduce the number of unrated players as the guild rank increases.
I hate the events. They completly destroy balance for lower and mid players. I must play 2 weeks or more to level up a new team. So it ends as a random factor and does not change the teams at all. If you do not want to remove it from lower PvP, please think about removing it from guild wars.
And please switch off that endless combo off randomness. Loosing because the enemy gets full mana in first turn from lucky combos falling down is annoying. Especial if you have a fast team and get stomped because enemy mysthics get their mana twice as fast.
Finally, more balanced troops and less luck based skills (devour, death…) would make Gems of War and its guild wars a lot better.
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Read the first two hundred posts or so and gave up trying to read the whole thing. But here are my thoughts on what I did read, as well as my suggestions.
- Allow only counting the top 27 scores. Gives a buffer to everybody for really bad luck, as well as vacations and real life interruptions.
- Allow defenses to continue to be set as they are currently. Do NOT have them set by devs, do NOT prevent duplicate troops (unless that is a game/troop mechanic that is introduced and will also apply to PvP). GW defenses should be controlled by the player, and follow the same rules as PvP.
- Add scoring for defense. Make defense follow constraints similar to the offense in order to get higher scores, and make bonuses for these constraints high enough to make it an option worth choosing. However, these constraints should be different than the offense ones (not red for both sides, maybe red for offense and yellow for defense).
- Make constraints more than just colour, for example a Centaur day, or an Epic day. I actually thought this was the original design, and was disappointed that it’s only colour. This could really open things up.
- Allow battles to be played on any day, including the first day. The current design requires playing the last day, which is sometimes a bit restricting.
- Make the start day match up with PvP. I understand the spike in processing for the end of week and the desire to avoid increasing it, however, since this is cloud based, in general having more parallel processing power should solve most of this and is easily doable with AWS. From a player or guild perspective, being able to switch players on the off day without having to worry about them missing guild task rewards on Monday would be a huge plus.
- Eliminate surviving troops from the scoring. This is too limiting and makes the game all about summoners. Either change it to be based simply on winning, or have the score based partly on speed/efficiency of the win and partly on survivng troops. This would mean a slow game with summoners could still be viable, but a quick kamikaze attack which wins quickly but maybe sacrifices some troops would also receive bonuses. Basically, allow multiple strategies to be able to get top scores, don’t pigeonhole play style.
- Leave sentinel bonuses as is, flowing up to the top performing players. This not only makes the later battles more difficult, but rewards those players who do well (since there is basically no other individual rewards received from GW other then your position).
- Continue to allow kingdom and guild bonuses to apply. This is Guild Wars, so guilds should be able to use the bonuses they built.
- Continue to use the bracketing system, since the level of play is very different between brackets, so straight rankings by win across the entire player base isn’t a fair comparison. However, some acceleration needs to be possible for lower ranked guilds to be able to get into the top brackets. Taking a month or 6 weeks is reasonable, but 6 months is too long, and dis-incentivizes newer guilds.
- Most important, regardless of the changes decided, make sure they are presented clearly and transparently to players. No more secret hidden algorithms that can’t be understood, audited, or planned for.
Overall, I really like GW, and despite the long list I think only a bunch of minor tweaks are needed, not a few major ones. I agree with @Strat that the most pressing issue with the game is not GW but rather overall troop balance, and improving that will fix a lot of the GW issues. Also, the most polarizing issue with GW is simply the fact that it is competitive, which some simply don’t like regardless of how it is implemented (since it’s not casual), and I don’t believe any amount of changes will fix this core problem.
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Under no circumstances would I allow players to attack in guild wars before all players have had an opportunity to set up their sentinels and defensive teams. To allow players the opportunity to do that would give them an unfair advantage simply due to time zones. A one day grace before the wars begin would do that.
Here in the US the daily reset is about midnight and not many players can and will be active during that period. The players who could attack simply because they have an advantageous time zone would get an unfair advantage since they could attack (on the first day) before other players even have the opportunity to set up.
One really good thing about GW was you had one day to get things set up before the war begins. Don’t change that!
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I am also on board with the +1 to all sentinels button, but there are some in my guild that do magic to 3 and then the rest to 1. This wouldn’t be too much extra, but what about a system like this:
All statues have a level number with arrows left and right of that (similar to ascension page) where you can individually up the statue to the proper level you would like. Then there is one button that locks in those selections and upgrades your sentinels.
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Here is another suggestion for guild wars to make it so you don’t face justice every other battle! Make it where you cannot use special troops like Famine or Justice! You have to use troops from regular kingdoms not special kingdoms! You can still use mythics but only ones from regular kingdoms! The other way to solve this is if you use special troop the victory is worth less and if you defeat a special troop the victory is worth more!
I never write on forums but this time I need to get something out there or we risk losing challenge to casual complaints:
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Making GW a monthly thing sounds crazy: Has to be every other week or continue with the every week format. (Extra downtime helps recruiting. Also maybe annoyed players need a week off so GW isn’t considered too granted.)
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Please don’t nerf the 4x color bonus too much: I think it has to be essential that the top scorers use single colored teams or the difficulty plummets. Daily change is important for variety ofc.
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Don’t make losing a battle too trivial: The difficulty to get a perfect score has to stay or veterans won’t get enough challenge.
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Don’t make losing a troop trivial either: The aspect of trying to summon a filler troop of any color to save your score is great.
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Please be extra careful how you adjust the defence team stuff: Even small adjustmets might make GW too easy so maybe a good idea to consider leaving it as is. (Only minor issue is a full guild using same defence team but you use different teams daily to fight so whatever.)
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With brilliant posts like this i can only request you write on forums more often! Excellent post brudda and thank you!
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